


Understanding

by Azar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/pseuds/Azar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Mulder wasn't the only one who could see Alex Krycek in that courtroom?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Probably one of my last X-Files fics. Or at least, certainly the last I wrote during the series run. Marita's POV on her interrogation in "The Truth." Thanks to my beta, Shahara Zade, and to all the wives--especially the Skampers--at the Harem of X-Files Other Women Defenders.

He has been beside me since the day I lost him. The irony of that is not lost on me, that after all the betrayals and bitterness that passed between us in life, in death he chose to return to my side.

At first I thought it was my imagination, loss and regrets pressing upon a heart already strained to the breaking point, snapping the thread that bound me to reality. Until I began to notice the evidence he left behind. That on nights when I felt his arms around me as I cried myself to sleep, there was a second indentation in my pillows. That one of the white roses I had left on his grave reappeared in my living room in a crystal bud vase he'd purchased for me in Austria.

I remember I cried again when I realized he was real. Cried for the reconciliation we never reached before he died.

And I remember he held me and told me he understood.

I imagine that the dead understand many things in a way that we, the living, never truly can. Perhaps that's why I still fear it so much, even knowing that Alex waits for me. There are too many things I do not want to understand.

I don't want to understand why Alex has chosen to help the men who killed him.

He understands that too: I can see it in his eyes as he watches me here in this courtroom. There is something in his eyes now that I don't know if I would have ever seen there while he lived--forgiveness. He forgave me for Dmitri. He forgave me telling him I would have left him to rot in Tunisia. And he forgives me now for sitting here speechless in this seat while Skinner interrogates me, growing more and more frustrated that I can't bring myself to voice what he knows I know.

In this moment I hate Walter Skinner. I hate him for shooting Alex. I hate him for expecting me to give him anything but contempt. I hate him for having the audacity to believe that, like the rest of them, I would give my very soul to save Mulder. I have no soul left to give: they put two bullets through it beneath the Hoover building a year ago.

But I despise myself for not knowing whether it is hate or fear that keeps me silent.

And Alex forgives me for it.

I see him step away from the wall. I see him approach Mulder and touch his shoulder. I see Mulder lift his head and see him. And then I hear his words: "They'll kill her."

Then I see Mulder understand. And in understanding, grant me my reprieve.

This is what you took from me, Fox Mulder, you and your trusted counsel. You have no right to ask anything else.

 


End file.
